


Signal Boost

by tangerinepuppet



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Entrapdak Secret Santa 2019, F/M, Post-Season 4, Some angst, Telepathic Communication, lots of feels
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:07:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22027543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tangerinepuppet/pseuds/tangerinepuppet
Summary: Entrapta is determined to get her lab partner back.
Relationships: Entrapta/Hordak (She-Ra)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 83





	Signal Boost

**Author's Note:**

> This is my creation for the 2019 Entrapdak Secret Santa for tumblr user hala-macaron! I hope you (and everyone else) enjoy!  
> Don't think too hard about how her device works, lol. I needed an excuse for Entrapta to talk to memory-wiped Hordak without a whole spaceship heist. This definitely has some Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind vibes, and I'm not unhappy about that.  
> There will be more chapters!

For the first few hours, Entrapta felt numb. Her survival of Beast Island had not completely outdone the effects of months spent on the land mass, and the edges of her thoughts are still… gray.

She sits in the windowsill of one of the anterooms to Bright Moon's war room, trying to stay out of the way. She doesn't know if the Rebellion trusts her anymore, or if they ever will again. She hardly understood how to comply with their social norms when she was accepted as one of them, and can't begin to wrap her head around how to do it again now.

After the portal jump out of Despondos, she’s started to feel more. The excitement at the stars and planets in the sky, and everything she could learn about them, is better than anything she could have achieved on Beast Island. She knows that. But it was still difficult to find any joy in it all. She has no one to share any new discoveries with. Things with King Micah are awkward after their less than savory interactions on the island, and Adora and Bow are occupied with planning how to retrieve Glimmer from Horde Prime's ship, and saving the planet from this newest threat.

And Horde Prime certainly is a threat. Entrapta knows she should be feeling some existential dread about the enormous ships hanging above Etheria, but all she feels is a dull sadness.

She should be angry at Hordak. For all she knows, he had ordered Catra to stun her and send her to Beast Island. And yet. She wants nothing but to talk to him, to find out what he thinks about all these new developments. To look up at the stars with him. To… tol hold him, and be held by him.

She thinks about her last few days with Hordak before Catra stunned her and opened the portal. He had been so tender with her during their late nights in the lab, dropping all layers of the war lord he showed to his subordinates. He brought her blankets and food so she wouldn’t have to leave her work station, and sometimes just sat beside her, stroking her hair as she agonized over an equation or a software update. One night, she fell asleep on a bench and woke to find Lord Hordak kneeling beside her, holding her hand, and staring up at her in wonderment. He then kissed her softly on the forehead before becoming flustered and hurrying off to another corner of his sanctum. He was the greatest puzzle she ever met, and she wants him back by her side.

So Entrapta does the only thing she knows how to do in situations like this. She starts planning how to build a new gadget.

She's been enjoying the view of the stars from her perch on the window, but she's going to need to leave it for a room that’s better tech-equipped. She hops down to the floor, clears up some tiny plates that had been delivered to her by the Bright Moon staff, and drops them on a side table as she exits the room. She makes her way down the outer hallway as softly as she can. Her plan isn’t exactly well, rebellious to the Rebellion, but it’s not something she thinks any of her old friends would get behind so quickly.

She knows where Bow keeps his techmaster materials. He brought her to this room just a few days ago when they first arrived in Bright Moon, to get her help with running readings on Etheria’s placement in their new solar system, and on the proximity of Horde Prime’s ships and how to best defend themselves. She was happy to help him with these tasks, both out of interest and to distract herself from the dread at the edges of her consciousness.

She finds the room again with ease. Like most other rooms in the castle, it seems to have once been a comfortable bedroom or parlor, with soft pillows and silky chaise lounges pushed awkwardly to the corners of the room. But in the center is the equipment Bow has gathered and assembled in the past few years: monitors, boxes of tools and wires, control pads and circuit boards. All piled and sorted in the kind of controlled chaos that feels like home to Entrapta. A warmness tingles through her limbs and at the edges of her hair. She may feel happy with the princesses again one day, if she can stay in this room as much as she wants.

Before she can close the door behind her, Entrapta hears a familiar clanking coming down the hall she just entered from. She isn’t sure if she can trust her senses - there was no way her old bot could be in Bright Moon. But here she is - Entrapta’s favorite invention. Emily bowls into the room and nearly knocks Entrapta over, whirring and beeping and blinking with delight 

“EMILY!” Entrapta shouts, throwing her arms and hair around the robot. “How did you get here?!” 

Emily begins to buzz and beep frantically, and Entrapta is able to gather most of the story. “Scorpia brought you? All the way from the Fright Zone? Fascinating! I was worried sick about what - what they… the Horde… would do you once I was gone…” She doesn’t want to think much more on this subject. She was plagued with fears on Beast Island about what could have been done to Emily, but she never should have doubted Scorpia’s dedication. 

“Nevermind all that.You’re here now. We’re here now! And I have a project I need your help with. Possibly one of the most complicated ideas I’ve ever had - but I think it can work, and I’ll work twice as fast with your help!”

They set to work. Entrapta hardly even needs to explain the plan to Emily. She programmed the bot’s AI with machine learning that adapts to anticipate Entrapta’s needs. And Emily knows, almost instantly, how desperately Entrapta needs to make contact with her old lab partner.

If Hordak has been taken back up to Horde Prime’s ship, Entrapta must assume the worst case scenario. Prime doesn’t seem the type to murder his clones in cold bllod - that would violate the basic biological need to protect any organism with DNA similar to your own. Prime sent Hordak to the front lines of battle, so clearly he doesn’t have much regard for an imperfect clone like Hordak. But when he takes him up to his ship, he’s bound to take more extreme, non-murder methods. Memory wiping, if that’s in his capacity, seems like the next logical step, if he wants to stamp out a clone’s individuality.

As soon as she learned of Hordak’s full story and his ambitions to return to his brother, she began to prepare for the day when Horde Prime might try to reprogram Hordak. She wanted to preserve the unique Hordak she knew. She had taken a few DNA samples from him, bunches of hair from the bathroom in his sanctum, saliva samples from the spoons she placed in his tiny soups. Yes, he probably would have considered any of this an egregious affront to his privacy, but Entrapta generally believes that what people don’t know can’t hurt them.

She kept the vial with her in a zippered pocket of her overalls throughout her months on Beast Island. Despite its intended practical scientific purpose, it had begun to take on a sentimental one too. Whenever the island began to draw her in, seducing her with its capacity for information, she would hold the vial close and remember there was someone out there who could help her conduct better science than any First Ones’ dumping ground.

She sets to work building the device. It’s designed to send out a signal that could only be read by someone with unique DNA strands. She based some elements f it on the computer in the Beast Island temple which transmitted the signal across the island. It had seemed to have different effects on different people, and that was how she planned to keep her message to Hordak safe. Like an antibiotic passing over somatic cells, it would only be noise if picked up by any other being, including, she hoped, Horde Prime. Of course, there was a risk that even if her intended message reached Hordak, he would dutifully report it to his master. 

“Note to self: Make sure my initial message warns Hordak of the danger of relaying it to Horde Prime.” she speaks into a recorder she had brought with her to Bright Moon. “Let’s hope Hordak’s private and paranoid tendencies are still a part of him.”

The machine for relaying and receiving her genetics-encrypted messages is going to be complicated to build. Bow has very rudimentary biotech - nothing compared to some of the old First Ones relics she had found on Beast Island. But luckily, she studied those enough to have a rough idea of how to build them. She works tirelessly with Emily, taking minimal breaks to nap, eat, and use the bathroom. Bow comes in and out of the room a few times, but is so emotionally taxed from planning a rescue mission and defense strategy that he hardly notices her. At one point, he does trip over a pile of makeshift petri dishes she had maneuvered out of saucers from the kitchens.

“What is all this, anyway, Entrapta?” he aska, noticing seemingly for the first time her small city of wires, monitors, and biological equipment spreading out over about a third of the floorspace in the room.

“Oh, I’m seeing how I can expand your biotechnology capabilities.” she answers plainly. As a pursuer of the truth, Entrapta never saw the point of lying, but she has learned when it becomes simpler to only tell a part of the whole story.

“Oh- that’s pretty neat actually. Can you tell me more about it once… all this” he gestures vaguely at the sky out the window, “is uh… sorted out?”

“I would be happy to, Bow.”

He gives her a little wave and rushes out with a box of wireless earpieces. Entrapta is quite fond of Bow. He seems the most likely of any of the Rebellion to trust her again one day. Maybe she could even explain the true nature of her project after, as he said, all this is sorted out.

Within a few hours, the prototype of the machine is complete. A thrill runs through her as she powers it up. Emily blinking at her from the other side. 

“Okay, Emily, send me the test message.” They’ve set it up for the first message to be compatible only with Entrapta’s genes. Emily gingerly pokes one of her metal claws on button, and a red light turns on, telling her the device is recording. The bot makes a short sequence of beeps, and ends the message. Moments later, the sound, like the signal on Beast Island, pushes its way into Entrapta mind, its DNA-specific message translated over to brain waves.

“IT WORKS!” She bounces up, running over to Emily on her pigtails to hug her bot. “Emily, you’re a genius!” 

Emily beeps out a meek, robot-equivalent of “You’re the real brains of this operation>”

Entrapta beams at her creation for a moment, until she is overcome with the need to try out the device for real.

“I think I need to find somewhere private, Emily. You understand…”

In response, the bot shoots out a projection of a blueprint of Castle Bright Moon, with little red dots blinking along a path from the room they’re in to a remote, high tower. “The signal will be strong from up there, too! Thanks a million, Emily.” 

Entrapta picks up the machine, commits Emily’s map to memory, and quickly makes her way up to the tower. It’s chilly up here, and the middle of the night. THe tower she’s found herself in has a view of the Moonstone, and seems to be one of the highest points in the castile. She looks up at the night sky, the beautiful galaxies and planetary systems, with a cloud of Horde ships blotting out the light just above her. Dhe takes a deep breath, sits down on the cold stone, and powers up the device.

She sets the signal destination to Hordak’s DNA sample, and points its transmitter in the direction of the ship. Her heart pounds and she presses the record button. The red light comes on again.

“Hello. Please don’t be alarmed by this message. If you’re surrounded by anyone else, just act like you’re not hearing this. But if you can hear it, I need you to trust me. I’m - I’m your friend. This will all make sense soon, I promise.”

That seems like as much of an introduction as a memory-wiped clone can handle. She ends the recording and sends it out.

Figuring out how Hordak could possibly reply to these messages was the most difficult part of the design process. But if Prime’s ship is equipped with the kind of technology she hopes it is - an advanced version of what the First ones used millenia ago - then he should be able to speak back to her. She presses the record button again.

“I need you to find something - a recording device, with any kind of telepathic transmission capabilities. If you can send a message back in the direction of the planet below you, my device will be the only one able to pick up your signal.” She sends this message out, too. If anyone receives it besides Hordak, she may have just betrayed the entire planet.

She waits. Minutes drag by, and she shivers in the night air. Then suddenly, a voice emerges in her mind, like a thought that is not her own.

“Who are you? If you don’t explain yourself, I will report you to Horde Prime, and he’ll show no mercy to your rebellious planet.”

Entrapta nearly faints at the sound of his voice. Its robotic tone reveals her fears to be true - he’s no longer himself, or at least has lost his memories of his life on Etheria. That, or he’s bluffing, But that isn’t like  _ her _ Hordak to do. She presses record again.

“This is going to be difficult to explain. You… well, you used to live on this planet. And you knew me. I’m… your friend.”

More waiting.

“That’s preposterous.” He still sounds the same, he voices going up at the end of a sentence when he’s taken aback, a slight snarl in the back of his throat. “The Horde has only just arrived at this planet, it only just emerged from a non-galactic portal. I was tasked with looking at the readings just this morning.”

She needs to think of how to convince him. Horde Prime has set up some believable lies. But she knows more about Hordak, the one she knew. 

“Have you seen more about the planet? Surely in his vast libraries, Horde Prime has records of this planet as it was found by its earliest settlers. They published these findings millenia ago. These colonists described a planet void of any scientific or technological advancement. Etheria remained in a similar state for most of its history. But look down at it now. Do you see the industry, the large tech-equipped city at the edge of the woods? The war ships in its rivers and oceans? These have only developed within the past thirty years or so. Clearly the Horde didn’t just arrive here.” 

She sends the message out, hoping he has a way to access all the information she just cited. This seems to be the case, because he doesn’t reply for another few minutes.

“I have checked the records and looked at the images our drones have taken of the planet's surface. You make some sound points. What are you implying happened to this planet in the past few decades? I’m intrigued. I’ll give you a few more minutes of my time.”

Good, he’s bought it. “The Horde sent an… emissary here. To develop the planet’s capabilities, before Prime comes in to finish conquering it.” Telling him the full story of Prime’s rejection and abandonment of him would be too much at the moment. She’ll have to work up to it, for him to believe and trust her.

“We have no records of this. Are you implying I was the emissary? Is that how I am supposed to know you?” His voice is thick with doubt. She hopes it is in Prime’s version of the story, and not hers.

“Yes! That’s exactly it. It’s how I’m communicating solely with you. I have… some of your DNA… on hand.”

The next silence is the longest.

“If you have my DNA, and no one else is hearing this, would that mean…” he trails off, she can even picture his face, lost in thought, “ Would that mean my genetic code is significantly different from Prime’s and any of his other clones?”

She blurts out her response so quickly, she doesn’t think, “Yes, Hordak, it does!”

His response is confused. “What did you just call me?”

She needs to be careful with her next message. “When you were on Etheria, you took a name… in the custom of the locals.”

“Horr-daak. The second vowel is so strange.”

She giggles into the transmitter, “You liked it when you were here!”

“And what is your name, local?”

She’s taken aback. He’s taking interest in her, not just in the information about his life. “Oh. It’s Entrapta.” 

She hears him testing it out in his thoughts. “En-traaap-ta. It’s a pleasing combination of syllables.”

She feels her cheeks flush when she hears this. “Oh. Thank you.”

“How did we know each other, Entrapta?” 

“We met because… I was taken in by a comrade of yours, and... decided to help you with some projects.”

“I see. You were supportive of Horde Prime’s empire, and cared about the expansion of the Horde?”

“Well, not exactly. I care about science. And I care about… you.”

There’s a definite scoff to his next message. “This makes no sense. You don’t seem like a fool, Entrapta. No one can care about one clone of the Horde without caring for our entire army, and the supreme rulership of Lord Prime.”

She’s not sure how to answer this. He seems to believe her story, but still has no concept of any value for individuality.

“While you were on our planet, you lost contact with Horde Prime. No one here knew how large his empire was, or that there were many more clones like you. When I met you, I grew to appreciate you as… yourself.”

There’s another long stretch of silence. This will be a lot for Hordak to process. When his reply comes, his voice is pained, yet excited somehow.

“You may have trouble believing this, but sometimes, I feel entirely separate from my brothers. I work in the war room on Prime’s main ship, strategizing with a dozen other clones. Our minds are united in our love for Prime, but I find my thoughts sometimes taking shape of their own.”

This is good. Entrapta can’t help but jump up and pace around the tower when she hears this. He still has capacity for individuality - maybe even some thoughts hidden from Prime. Before she can craft a response, another message comes in from him.

“This will sound absurd, but I believe I think of you sometimes.”

She sits back down. How can it be? Can her memory be so strongly imprinted in his mind that even a powerful reset wouldn’t strike her out?

“What are those thoughts like?”

“Warm. Bright. There are colors I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.”

Her purple hair, she thinks, and maybe her magenta eyes.

“Entrapta, can you tell me something?”

“Of course.”

His voice is nervous. “How did I feel toward you?”

She tries to think of words, emotions that would make sense to him in this state. “You felt… admiration, I think. You always told me you found my theories sound and respected my scientific integrity.”

“There’s something… stronger. When I try to think of you.”

She’s flabbergasted. Could his emotional memory really be this strong? She’ll have to revisit her notes on memory wiping technology at a later point. There must be parts of the brain it can’t reach.

“You… you once told me…” She doesn’t know how to tell him this. It was the night she found him holding her hand when she woke up on the bench. But hours before, just as she was falling asleep, Hordak had been holding her. She had become dehydrated from forgetting to drink while she was working. He had Imp bring some water, and sat down on his throne in his sanctum. He sat beside her, and wrapped his arms around her, stroking her back with his thin fingers, resting his head on hers. He assured her they would finish the portal, because no one worked better together than the two of them, and their shared determination was going to bring about their greatest glory. And then, as she fell asleep he whispered…

“...that you loved me.”    
She had said it out loud. There was no going back now.

“I cannot fathom loving anyone but Prime, and his destiny to conquer the stars. But I sense a feeling about you, Entrapta. It’s nothing like how I feel about my brother. It is somehow… more raw. More wild.”

“You were raw and wild the whole time I knew you, Hordak. I never knew what you were going to do next.”

“Those sound like terrible features for a clone soldier.”

“You were more than a clone soldier here. You were a leader.”

His tone is utter shock. ‘THis is utter blasphemy. Horde Prime is the only leader in the Horde.”

She is cautious again. ‘Things are different, here on Ehteria.”

“That is why Prime wishes to destroy your planet.”

He doesn’t need to understand the love. All she needs right now is his trust. “Think of all those bright and colorful memories you told me about. If you want to see more of that, I can help you.”

She holds her breath.

“The love you say I felt for you. Do you reciprocate it?”

She’s taken aback. What is she supposed to say to that? “I do, Hordak. It’s why I built a communications device. To find you, and… bring you back to me.”

More silence. Even before his next message, she can feel his shock and hesitation.

“I am trying to make sense of everything you've told me. Somehow, I know I can believe you. If all you say is true, then, I am forced to conclude that Horde Prime has never loved me as I love him. In fact, I’m not sure if anyone has ever loved me but you. I do not see any choice better than to find you again. If my memories are correct… then I know, somehow, you brought me to life.” 

She presses the record button, but realizes she can’t get any words out. Her throat feels like it’s closing up, and there are tears in her eyes. How is it that it took Hordak’s memory being wiped for her to hear these words from him? There’s no going back now. She will save Hordak, even if she must risk her life and safety of Ehtheria to do it. For what, though? She asks herself. She would like to say it’s for science, and that’s half right. But that’s not it. She will do it for Hordak, and for herself. Nothing can stop their love for each other, because nothing is as powerful.

“Your place is not with Horde Prime. Your place is here. Ehtheria is a place where everyone can be a beautiful mix of imperfections and contradictions. I’m going to bring you back.”


End file.
